H is the identical twin brother of B, younger by a few hours. B was a professional flautist. My mother met him in the year 1978, when his orchestra came to Hong Kong while on tour. They grew up in Germany. B still lives in Germany, just north of Bonn along the Rhein. H has been a businessman and in a way a legal consultant with various large coorporations through his life. Efficient, pragmatic, outspoken when it comes to business ethics, intellectual and technical property. H has lived in Hong Kong for more than ten years now, and for most of that time with his girlfriend E. He and his wife, who still lives in Germany, have been agreeable separated for decades. E has a daughter and is also long time separated from her husband. H & B recently turned 70, and they look 70. H especially, his skin is raisined, though his countenance remains good-humored. E is now 60, and looks 48. She would like 40 with fewer silver hairs.
B and my mom have a well-founded friendship of decades. Story of how they met to come. B and mother were out of touch for decades until my mother sought him out when my family visited me in Germany in December 2011. My mom and I met H last year in Hong Kong upon B’s recommendation. He was charming, hilarious, honest, hyperbolic. ‘I cannot find good brrread here. This soft white bread in ze shops here – zis iz brrread for toothless people.’ We’re laughing. He’s not wrong. ‘All you have to do is to put it in your mouth and zen – how do you say? – to swellow?’ ‘Swallow’ I say. ‘Yes, swallow.’ He says. We critique the bread, the lack of schnapps (booze) in the black forest cakes, his intolerance to chicken feet, my tolerance to chicken feet, fish heads, and other foods requiring surgically stripping meat off of bones with my teeth.
He lives in the real world. B, the professional musician – has always been ‘lazy’ – people pay him a lot of money to travel and to play the flute and the piccolo – he mock plays a little piccolo ‘doo doo doo doo’ and can sit in a room and listen to Mozart and weep. ‘Zis is not ze rrreal vorld!’ Says H ‘Ze rrreal vorld is tough!’ His elaborations entertained us.
Today, my mood and my stomach are still contentious after last night’s dinner.
Vomen want everything and cannot understand that zey can’t have everything. Zey vant to have babies and zey vant to vork like a man but zey do not understand that zey have difference hormones and that if zey want to have babies zey cannot vork like a man. Because men have different hormones zey cannot have babies so zeir hormones make zem to focus on going out to work and to make money. Vomen cannot vork like men if zey are going to have cheeldren and need to stay at home and to care for ze cheeldren. Zey have hormones to have cheeldren and to have more emotions vhich are not rrrational and zerefore cannot vork in the practical vorld like men.
I listen with an increasingly incredulous face, not in shock, maybe scolding squinting eyes, lips in an unpursed contemptuous closed hint of a smile.
He pauses with the usual devious and humored smile. Looking at me earnestly through his rimless glasses he leans forward and backwards once, leading with his hand, and says ‘Liane, I fink you don’t understand me’ with a downward, endearing inflection.
‘Oh I understand what you are saying. You are entitled to your opinion. I am not agreeing with you.’
Take my bruzzer (brother) for exahmple. All hees life he has been like vomen – he and my muzzer, zey vere leestening to Beethoven or Mozart or Bach or whoever and veeping and zees iz not ze rrreal vorld. Vhen I was sixteen I vent to vork on a farm and every day I had to stand up at four in ze morning, Liane, at four in zee morning to milk ze cows.
‘Now we’re onto a different subject’ I say, ‘the difference between you and your brother. We already knew that.’
‘Yes, but you see he is just like my muzzer – his hormones are like voman’s’ Yet, B, is lucky to have had a wife all this time who seems to have managed the logistics and bookkeeping of life in this tough world.
We fight some more, reach another moment of ‘Liane, you don’t understand me’, sit and let the other women continue Cantonese small talk.
I don’t remember if we divert to other subjects or how we return to conversation:
‘Men would be the superior race if vomen didn’t spoil zem.’ H says.
I’m pondering which arguments of the night to contend while my mother says niceties – how nice it is to be spoiled, how does B’s wife spoil him, why should she stop, etc. The responses are not making sense to me.
‘What do you mean by spoil?’ I say.
He is perplexed – his eyes say – is there more than one meaning of spoil?
‘Spoiled people are not the same as spoiled food’ I state.
He gestures a space between his two hands on the table. ‘Spoil is like when you have an apple, and it gets old, or some bugs and you cannot eat it.’
‘Like rotten’ I say.
‘And this is my meaning when I say spoiled’ he says.
‘Ok that’s not what it usually means when people are spoiled’ I explain. ‘A spoiled person is someone who has received too much, too many gifts, been taken care of too much.’
E and mom verify the Cantonese phrase for this meaning on the side.
‘Ok this is not my meaning’ says H.
‘Ok, I see’ – I sit straight while angled left to face him – similarly contemptuously smiling as before.
What do they mean? E asks in Cantonese.
‘I mean to make something bad’ he says – I know, I chime in – ‘What is the word I want to use?’he asks.
I lean in ‘I don’t think I want to teach you what you want to say?’
E says the same Cantonese phrase associated with the common meaning of spoiling a person – is that right? No, say my mom and I.
‘Go home and find it in the dictionary’ Mom says. A good friend recently pointed out that my mom speaks English like it's a tonal language. 'Go home' - each word has a deliberate and terminal inflection. She asks me a few possible words for H's meaning of 'spoiled'. I say no, none of them are the word that fits his meaning most, and I’m not going to say it out loud.
Nor am I going to find out the correct Cantonese way to say it – they’ll enjoy translating it too much.
He is laughing the whole time. My mom treats the conversation like he is always joking. The laughter never paused. I’m laughing too, but seriously perturbed, not sure who has perturbed me the most.
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Oh yes, the food:
1 Grouper
8 Razor clams
1 plate of buttery noodles with lobster tail and claws
1 plate of stir fried snow peas, carrots, woodear mushrooms, thin squid slices
Half a chicken
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Razor Clams
Piled high with minced garlic and bean thread. |
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Grouper - Steamed then oiled with ginger and scallions
This head had great cheeks - sweet and meaty. The cheeks and the forehead meat are the most slippery and tender of the entire fish. You are a 'special' if I share this with you. |
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| Yes, I ate the noodles and lobster claw in one bite with chopsticks. (No I did not.) |
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How did we choose this restaurant?
Mother and I previously arranged with H & E to meet at Exit B1 of the Jordan subway station because I would be coming from the conference and that is where I alighted the train daily to attend the conference. H & E live farther into the New Territories, this was a compromise, considering I'd been there since 7:30 am and transiting through town again might burn me. At 6 pm, our agreed meeting time, I mother calls my candy bar mobile phone.
Where are you?
I'm at B1.
Where are you?
I'm at B1.
Inside or outside, I ask?
Inside, she says.
Really? What do you see?
I see H! Hallo...blah blah...we three are here, looking for you.
What do you see?
I see 'lo po bang' ('Wife cakes', literally. These are a kind of cake.)
What? Where?
___ street.
What?
That is the name of the stop.
Which subway stop are you at?
Yau Ma Tei.
I'm at Jordan.
You said 'Yau Ma Tei.'
I absolutely did not, I've been coming here every day. (Furthermore, this is the only station with an exit labeled 'Eaton Hotel' - where the conference is.)
Ok, should we come find you?
No, I know the way there. (I know the way north, and that's all I need to know.)
I ascend to ground level and walk ~1 km until I find Yau Ma Tei station in my pencil skirt, stockings, formal flats (fortunately), schlepping my laptop bag, descend into the station, I find them at B1. The walk feels longer while rushing through pedestrian food traffic.
Yay.
Where should we go, mom asks.
I researched the area near the other station but nevermind now, we are farther from it.
Ok, let's go outside and look around.
We wonder around Nathan Road, the main drag, headed south, in the direction of Jordan station. We see mostly big flashy establishments, not your cheap eats. No one is familiar with this area. I am not picky. The others have firm but not verbalized criteria. Soon we're blocks away from Jordan station. I say earlier I found a street with lots of options, Thai food, noodles, hot pot, rice meals, Chiu Chow style -ok we'll follow you they say. Search hits for 'restaurants' would look like a tangle of red caterpillars if you yelped this area for restaurants. Restaurant to restaurant - vetoed for different reasons. But the final reasoning is - I've never been to those, I don't know if they're good, says E. We go to a well established restaurant - a local chain - in a building next to the hotel I've been at.
You look so tired, they say.
